


Closer to Fine

by hhertzof



Category: Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Community: tardis_bigbang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhertzof/pseuds/hhertzof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor believes Luke is his son and that Sarah lied to him at Deffrey Vale. The truth is more complex than anyone suspected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to persiflage_1, whatkaitedid, attempt_unique and paranoidangel for betaing. Written for tardis_bigbang 2009.

The Doctor turned up at the school, shortly after Earth had been returned to its normal location in the universe. It was shortly after home time and the area was filled with teenagers talking and wandering off in different directions. He spotted Luke in the crowd and headed straight for him, weaving through the throngs as if he did this all the time. Luke was talking to two other teenagers and a woman...about Donna's age, perhaps? He still had trouble guessing human ages.

He had almost reached them when Luke turned and saw him. "Hallo. Didn't expect to see you here."

"I thought I'd pick you up from school," he grinned his most engaging grin. He wasn't sure what Sarah had said to Luke about him, but there was always the chance that she'd portrayed him as unreliable and dangerous and someone to stay away from. Mums were like that, even if Sarah wasn't

The woman was looking from him to Luke and back again. "You must be Luke's father. I'm Carla. Clyde's mum." She offered him her hand.

He shook it energetically, thinking that Clyde must be the other boy. "Pleased to meet you. I'm John Smith," he added helpfully. He caught Luke's eye and decided that the "no relation" bit might not be appropriate in this situation.

Luke looked slightly relieved. "These are my friends, Clyde and Rani," he said. "Does Mum know you're about?"

He could tell that what Luke really wanted to ask was "where's the catastrophe?", and he admired the boy's restraint. He shook hands with them both, observing the appropriate formalities.

Once the "glad to meet you"s were out of the way, Clyde started to say something and stopped. The Doctor noticed Luke's not so subtle kick in the shin and wondered what that was about. But Sarah's son could be trusted to have a good reason for doing something like that. Sarah generally did back when he travelled with her, even if he couldn't always figure out what it was.

"Thrilled to meet you all, but we must dash." He gestured for Luke to join him.

"Wait a moment," Carla said with the air of someone who wanted to make sure things were on the up and up. "Are you sure your mother would approve of you going off with him?"

"Of course," Luke said confidently. "In fact, we're going straight home, aren't we?"

"That was the plan. Your mum wasn't home so I thought I'd fetch you first." Sensing that this was one of _those_ situations, he turned on the charm. "Trust me, it wasn't that sort of break up. I'm not going to kidnap Luke and disappear. I swear." He hoped he wasn't laying it on too thickly.

Luke nodded his agreement. "It's okay, Carla. Honest." Turning to his friends, he said, "Have fun bowling." He sounded almost glad to be getting out of it. "We best get home before mum starts to worry.

The other two teenagers seemed a little put out at this cavalier treatment, but Luke waved good-bye and wandered off with the Doctor before they could say anything.

The Doctor looked at him thoughtfully but didn't say anything. He was sure Luke had a reason for his behaviour. Instead, he decided it was time he started acting like a dad and inquired about what the boy had been studying recently. He was relieved to find that Sarah was supplementing his education with lessons at home with her and with Mr Smith. They ended up having a lovely discussion about solar batteries.


	2. Chapter 2

When they got back to the house, Sarah's car was in the driveway, but she wasn't downstairs. Luke wasn't at all surprised, and once they had made a quick survey, Luke led the Doctor up to the attic and pushed open the door.

Sarah didn't look up from the alien artifact she was tinkering, but that didn't stop her from asking, "And what are you doing here? I thought you were planning to go bowling with the others."

"Something came up."

The Doctor was certain that he'd learnt that particular tone of voice from Sarah.

Luke walked up behind his mum and gave her a quick hug. "We have a visitor."

Sarah tensed slightly, as though she was expecting the worst, and turned slowly.

"Just thought I'd stop by for a visit," the Doctor said a little too innocently, as he leaned comfortably against the table she was working at. "You left so quickly. We didn't really have the chance to talk with everyone else around." To his relief, Sarah's wariness was replaced with a big grin and she carefully laid down the tools she was working with, before throwing her arms round his neck and giving him a big hug.

"I'm always glad to see you, Doctor. You know that. But don't you have wandering round the galaxy to be doing and wrongs to be righting?" She let go of his neck and looked him in the eyes. "Put me down. I don't know why you're suddenly so obsessed with parting me from the floor.

"It's easier to meet you face to face," the Doctor offered, but then, noticing that Luke was looking a little embarrassed by their antics, lowered Sarah to the floor. "It's not as though I got to spend much time with you during our last adventure. " He started absently fiddling with gadgets and gizmos scattered all over the table. "We saved the world and then you ran off." He considered that he might be overdoing the "injured friend" bit and stopped there.

Sarah had to slap his hands a few times when he absently tried to slip something into his pockets. "You know why I left. You had plenty of younger assistants around and the adventure was over. You didn't need me."

"But that didn't mean I didn't want to catch up with you over a cuppa." The Doctor grinned, trusting that Sarah would take the hint. He was feeling a bit peckish.

"You did make tea, didn't you, Mum?" Luke jumped in.

Sarah supposed it _had_ been a long day at school. "I've been working up here all afternoon," Sarah said guiltily. looking at the two eager faces. "Fine, tea it is. Doctor, leave the Mimbarian Xens Crystal where you found it."

Now it was the Doctor's turn to look guilty. He hadn't come to steal from Sarah, and it did look like she had some concept of safe handling of her alien artefacts, unlike Torchwood. "Coming." He followed her down to the kitchen, with Luke close on his heels. This conversation would go much more pleasantly over cakes with jam or whatever Sarah had in her cupboards.

Sarah put the kettle on and rummaged through the cupboard. "Jaffa Cakes? Or I could mix up some scones?"

"I'll mix up the scones, Mum." Luke actually liked mixing stuff up in the kitchen ever since Sarah had pointed out that it was just a different form of chemistry.

"Good lad. And you, you've gone all mumsy. Look at you, offering to make me scones. Time was, when you wouldn't even make me a cup of tea." He couldn't help grinning at Sarah. He'd never seen this side of her before, but he quite approved.

"No, she hasn't," Luke interjected. "She still fights aliens. And forgets to feed me." Not that he minded. He'd rather have Sarah than any ordinary mum.

"It's a good thing you're old enough to feed yourself." Sarah was embarrassed anyway. "Heaven knows what I'd do with an actual baby." Probably run off to Australia at the first sign of a story and forget to make arrangements for it.

This bewildered the Doctor. Surely Luke had been a baby at some point. He hadn't planned to broach the subject with Luke in the room, but his curiosity got the better of him. "So, about Luke. Why didn't you tell me, Sarah?"

"Tell you what?" Sarah was confused. Though, just then the kettle whistled and she busied herself with sorting out the tea things.

That was strange. Why would she think that he wouldn't be curious about why she'd lied to him. Had she thought she would get away with it? "You said that any grandchildren you had would be someone else's, and here you are with a son. Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

Sarah turned to stare at him. If anything, she seemed even more bewildered. "It's not-"

"Don't tell me it isn't my business. He's our son. My son. You could have at least told me." Why _was_ she continuing this charade?

She tried again. "But he's not-"

Now he was getting irritated. "Sarah, don't lie to me. Look at him. He's brilliant with maths. Reminds me of me at that age. And you when I knew you. If I tried to picture the child we would have together, I would have come up with Luke." There it had been said. She couldn't deny it now.

"He's -" The Doctor tried to interrupt again, but Sarah continued speaking. "No, you are going to listen to me! He is not your son. He's not even my son. I adopted him a year ago. After I saw you. So I was telling the truth as I knew it then. I wasn't planning for Luke to come into my life. I wasn't even expecting it. In fact, he can tell you that I resisted the idea very strenuously. But he didn't have anywhere else to go and the thought of UNIT or Torchwood getting their hands on him made me feel sick," she snapped.

The Doctor sat back in his chair and stared at her. "You mean he isn't ours."

"I'm not even sure why you thought he was. The sums don't add up at all. Any more than they did when you said it had been half a dozen regenerations since I saw you last. Which incarnation _were_ you counting from?" she asked tiredly. "Your logic is even stranger than usual. Are you sure you're feeling alright?"

The Doctor ignored the last question. He was perfectly fine. "The one that left you in Aberdeen. Everything after that...well, it might have got changed during the war. And, to be honest, I didn't really think of our quick meetings after that as having seen you. Not properly." She'd died in one timeline, the one he didn't like to think about, and in another she had avoided him, as he'd been travelling with her younger self. There had been other fleeting meetings, and a few more close misses- and that whole Paul Morley business.

"I do think I would have noticed if I'd slept with you 15 years ago, Doctor. Your body temperature and double heartsbeat would have given it away." She wondered if he'd bring the Paul Morley thing up, but suspected he wouldn't. Unless he had found out that she knew. Anyway, the sums were all wrong for that too, since the wedding had been 12 years ago, and a two-year-old at the ceremony would have been very obvious.

Luke cleared his throat, and they both turned to look at him. "Forgot I was in the room, did you?" It had been interesting. He hadn't thought that his mum had had _that_ sort of relationship with the Doctor, but here they were behaving like a couple from one of the soaps Maria's mum had been addicted to.

The two adults had the grace to look embarrassed.

Finally the Doctor said, "Scrumptious tea, Sarah Jane. Your cooking has improved."

"All you've had so far is tea." Sarah looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

"Well, there was a time when you wouldn't even get me that." He gave her a cheeky grin, that turned into a wince due to the sharp pain in his ankle. He attempted a glare, but she gave him an innocent look and whatever he was going to say next was swallowed as the timer buzzed, and Luke got up to fetch the scones from the oven. "You do have marmalade, don't you?"

"Marmalade on scones?" Luke asked, befuddled.

Sarah, however, was accustomed to the Doctor's sweet tooth. "We have orange or grapefruit in the fridge. Take your pick."

The Doctor stuck his nose in the fridge, and emerged with both the orange and the grapefruit marmalade, butter _and_ clotted cream, with a satisfied look on his face.

By the time they were settled back at the table with scones and toppings and more tea, the moment was lost, and the conversation turned to more general things - what Luke was studying, the latest alien incursions, the incompetence of Torchwood. And the question of Luke's origins disappeared into the back of the Doctor's mind, to be brought up again later on.


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah stirred and shifted slightly before she remembered that she wasn't alone in the bed. The Doctor had thrown one arm comfortably over her and she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. Turning her head carefully, she realised he had actually dozed off. Not wanting to wake him, she nestled her head back into the pillow and relaxed.

The evening had gone very smoothly- too smoothly, perhaps. The Doctor had stayed for dinner and they had ended up in the attic working on rebuilding a Velian anti-gravity pod. The picture of a perfect family unit. And that was the last thing that Sarah needed.

Not that she'd ever admit it to him, but she had noticed the resemblance. In fact, she'd never willingly admitted it to herself, but that might have been why she had unbent enough to adopt him. She hadn't expected him to jump to the same conclusion. She hadn't expected to have to admit out loud that Luke couldn't possibly be their son.

But it meant something, that he had come to the same conclusion. She had assumed he'd moved on after all his speeches to her about getting on with her life, but perhaps neither of them had moved on as much as they would have liked.

The Doctor shifted and pulled her close, his skin cool against her own. "Sarah," he murmured in her ear before nuzzling it.

"Doctor." Sarah turned again in his arms so that she could look into his eyes.

He grinned lazily at her. "My Sarah Jane." He paused, dramatically, hoping the theatrics would get under her skin and she'd be honest with him. "About Luke -"

"You do realise that the biology doesn't work at all. Even with primitive human science, I can tell that." Sarah tried to ignore the way he was looking at her. Even if it had been a while since she'd had anyone look at her in that fashion, she had to wonder about his motives. Still, she always wondered about his motives.

"But-" he started. He paused, weighing his options, then took a deep breath. "Um, Paul Morley." He winced as though he were expecting her to be angry at him. "Time Lord experiment. You didn't know?" While he knew that she wasn't supposed to know about the experiment, this was Sarah, after all. If anyone would have figured out that something was amiss, it would have been Sarah.

She was tempted to mess with him, but resisted the urge. This thing was complicated enough without them winding each other up. "Yes, I figured it out. Got a slap on the wrist from the Time Lord in charge. But he seemed sensible enough." Pulling herself out of his arms, she sat up against the headboard, wrapping the sheet around her breasts. It wasn't as though he hadn't seen them before, but keeping him on the subject was difficult at the best of times.

The Doctor's face clouded. "He was a friend." He would have been back on Gallifrey with Romana when the Doctor had pushed the button.

Sarah leaned in to give him a hug, before pulling back. "Tell me this isn't some sort of insane scheme to continue your race. Because if it is, I have to tell you that you're doing it wrong."

A sputter of laughter. "Sarah-" He brushed a finger against her cheek. "Perhaps the urge is there, but I wasn't particularly good father material the first time around. And I'm not sure I'd want to breed a new race of Time Lords. But this is the first regeneration since the war, and there does seem to be a bump in the libido."

He felt obliged to demonstrate by giving Sarah a very thorough snog, not that she objected, but when she thought things would progress, he pulled back and looked at her. "You knew and you haven't slapped me for it yet."

"Why do you think I was so upset at Deffrey Vale? But I've got that out of my system now. In case you hadn't noticed." She pressed up against him, and was rewarded with another snog.

"We really should discuss this at some point." His breath caught as she started rubbing her body against his again, "but I'd much rather shag you senseless right now."

So much for keeping the Doctor on topic, Sarah thought vaguely. Not that she minded. No, she had to admit, she didn't mind this at all.


	4. Chapter 4

Sarah was late again. She dashed out of the train and started dodging people as she headed for the exit. This worked well until she rounded a corner and ran right into someone. They both stayed upright, but Sarah watched awkwardly as the man's stack of books and papers scattered over the floor.

"I'm terribly sorry, please let me help you pick them up." She bent down so he wouldn't see how red her face was. She turned slightly and let out a gasp. "Doctor?" she blurted out before the man turned and she could see that it wasn't him. Feeling even more awkward, she apologised, "Sorry, I thought you were someone I knew." It was the curls and the height that had confused her, but he didn't look like the sort of man who would wander around wearing an insanely long scarf.

"And I think you're someone I'd like to know," was his cheerful reply. "Paul Morley." Thankfully, it wasn't rush hour and they quickly gathered his books up before the next batch of tube riders came through.

"Sarah Jane Smith. Oh, you have my book." It was the last one she picked up, _World War Skaro_ by Sarah Jane Smith, the book proclaimed in bright red lettering, amid a desolate grey alien landscape. She'd been quite pleased with the cover to this one. "You're a science fiction fan."

"Guilty as charged. Are you really the Sarah Jane Smith who wrote this book? It's brilliant. Well, the cover is. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Too busy marking exams. But I've read the others and they are brilliant." Paul grinned at her. "Perhaps you have time for a cup of tea?"

Sarah considered. She _could_ come up with an excuse as to why she hadn't met Aunt Lavinia, or better yet, tell her the truth. Her aunt was always on her about being too hung up on the Doctor and not giving other men a chance, but providence had thrown one right into her lap and perhaps it was time to just take a chance. "I don't see why not. I just need to make a phone call."

~~~~

Once she'd reassured Aunt Lavinia that she hadn't been kidnapped by mysterious aliens again, Sarah led Paul to one of her favourite tea shops, and indulging her curiosity by peppering him with questions.

Paul had been in town a week, having taken a position as a science teacher at Coal Hill School. Sarah told him a sanitised version of her work as a journalist. Talk turned to absurdities, to politics, to books and films, to childhood scrapes. Tea turned into a walk and then to dinner at a pub and then Sarah inviting him in for a nightcap afterwards. She wasn't sure who made the first move, but suddenly they were snogging desperately, and she was trying to keep her head long enough to get into the bedroom.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd been so attracted to anyone. Her hands tangled in his curly hair, and she was aware of him fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. He got most of them open before tugging it open in frustration causing the last two buttons to fly off. She'd never liked this blouse anyway.

~~~~~

Sarah woke up beside him the next morning, feeling a little overheated (had it really been that long since she'd slept with another human?), but otherwise content. He cooked her a proper breakfast and made sure she got out the door in time for her interview, but not before exchanging numbers and promising to call.

She didn't actually expect him to call, and in retrospect, she wondered sometimes if it would have bothered her if he hadn't. But he did. Another long conversation over the phone and she'd agreed to see a film with him.

She found the buttons as she was getting ready and she debated sewing them back on herself, but decided that was too domestic and sentimental for her. It might have been the first blouse he'd seen her in, but it was getting a little threadbare. Instead she tucked the blouse in the ragbag and returned to thinking about what to wear on their date.

He picked her up promptly, full of glee as he'd finished _World War Skaro_ whilst she'd been working and had plenty of questions for her about her writing process, and where she came up with such great ideas. She fended off his hinting for spoilers for the next book with an enigmatic smile and finally changed the subject.

Dates followed, a whirlwind courtship ended in a quick marriage ceremony at the Registry Office. They settled into her flat, with Sarah feeling that perhaps, just this once, she'd got a relationship right.


	5. Chapter 5

Perhaps it was nearly losing Luke to the Slitheen, or the Doctor coming round thinking Luke was his son. Either way, Sarah felt a sudden urgency to find out more about Luke. She hadn't told the kids, but the Bane didn't have cloning technology yet, not to that degree. All the evidence she had discovered so far pointed to a past that Luke couldn't remember.

Sarah didn't say much about her plans for the weekend, just that she had to leave town on the trail of a story. It was easier just to let the kids fill in the blanks for themselves. She listened idly as they made plans that didn't include her or aliens, and hoped that they would have a nice, quiet weekend without her.

The hospital was infested with vworils, but that wasn't the reason she was here. It did provide her with a good story for when she got back, so she didn't object to the extra work. It wasn't as though vworils were terribly difficult to deal with. Collect them, give them a good talking to, send them back home to their families. She had never figured out why they liked hospitals so much, but it was usually kids acting up. The adults tended to be apologetic about their offspring. At least, the adults she'd met.

The infestation turned out to be two teenagers, or the vworil equivalent, who had borrowed Mum's spaceship and gone for a joy ride. They led her on a merry chase, but when she caught them, she gave them her usual lecture and then called their mum to come pick them up, leaving her to her original purpose in the hospital.

What she was really on the trail of was Luke's past. An amnesiac boy had been picked up on Bannerman Road close to her house a week before the business with the Bane. She'd been out of town and hadn't known anything about it until she started digging for strange events around the time of the Bane incident. He'd been taken to the nearest hospital and here she was, trying to find out more.

It took her a while to find the record. It wasn't under any obvious alias for a boy who couldn't remember his own name, but she finally found his file - under the name of Wormwood. If that didn't clinch it, the hospital records of the tests they'd done would have. They matched perfectly with what she'd discovered in her own tests, right after he'd come to live with her.

A nurse who recognised her from her Planet 3 days confirmed the story. "Ah, the amnesia case. I remember. Nothing else wrong with him and he seemed cheerful, if confused. His mum came and picked him up about two days later. A Mrs. Wormwood, I believe. Strange name like that, at any rate. Somehow his clothes had got lost, but that was okay, because she brought him new ones when the doctor said it was okay to release him. She seemed very mumsy. Why did you want to know this again?"

"She wasn't his real mum ,or a very good one," Sarah answered. "You wouldn't believe the state I found him in." Best to leave it to the imagination here, she thought, "She's been taken into custody and I've taken him in. But I needed to see if he had family anywhere. I don't suppose his clothing has turned up." She didn't attempt to look at the files herself. The other woman was inclined to be helpful, but she might not be if Sarah started pushing.

The nurse typed something into the computer, before getting up and rifling through one of the filing cabinets that still lined the office walls. "Sorry, no. Would you like me to send them along if they do? Or perhaps you'd like to talk to the doctor in charge of the case. That would be Dr Smith. No relation, I imagine."

Dr. Smith. The Doctor? That was his favoured alias. Of course it wasn't he, but Sarah couldn't help the shiver that ran down her spine. Still, it had to be a coincidence. He wasn't a medical doctor as far as she knew, and he would never have left Luke in Ms. Wormwood's hands. "Please do. As much as I love him, I wouldn't want to keep him from his own family. And I'd love to meet his doctor."

"It's a grand thing you're doing, Ms. Smith. I never believed those rumours about you." The woman grinned amicably at Sarah. "I used to watch you all the time on Planet Three. Those new reporters aren't anywhere near as good."

"I was cleared of those charges, but I do appreciate the sentiment." She did. It always helped to know that not everyone had bought into the carefully constructed plan that had brought her career to a screeching halt a few years ago. One more win for the good guys.

Dr Smith turned out to be Dr Daisy Smith. The two of them studied each other for a moment, and Sarah couldn't help but admire the contrast between the white lab coat and the doctor's dark skin and envy her her height as she followed Dr Smith into her untidy office. "So Ms Wormwood wasn't who she said she was. I suppose you must think us very gullible, but she did seem to have all her papers in order and pictures of the boy. How is he doing?"

"He seems to be happy," Sarah replied cautiously as she took the chair offered to her. "He's made some good friends and he's doing well in school." There was always the chance that someone would decide that she wasn't a fit mum and she'd end up having to deal with social services.

"I'm glad to hear it. He seemed like a sweet kid," the doctor sat down and rummaged in her desk. "Reminded me of someone, but I couldn't tell you who." She pushed cornrows out of her eyes, and looked at Sarah as though she was going to add something, but turned back to her desk drawer instead.

Sarah glanced down into the drawer, and bit her lip to keep from speaking. Among the pens and paper clips, there was a fob watch in a design that she recognised. A pattern was starting to form in her head and she wasn't sure she liked where it was going.

Dr Smith finally found what she was looking for and withdrew it, closing the drawer with a click. "This is the boy- Luke's. It was in his pockets when we found him. I wish I could tell you what happened to his clothing, but somehow his belongings were misplaced." She pressed the object in Sarah's hand.

It was round but too thick to be a fob watch. Opening her hand, Sarah saw a wooden yo-yo. She smiled and slipped her finger through the loop and tested it out. She'd never been as good at it as the Doctor, but he'd taught her a trick or two over the years. "I'm sure he'd love to have this back." Smooth wood, no paint or dye, and no indication of the manufacturer. She'd see what she could find out when she got home. The type of wood and the composition of the rope might tell her something new.

As she left, Sarah reflected that she wasn't surprised that the watch wasn't Luke's. But it was interesting that one had turned up now. She was going to have to consider her next move carefully, and perhaps a little investigation of Dr Daisy Smith was in order. Still, Luke was her first priority.


	6. Chapter 6

"But why can't we do our science experiment on alien technology?" Clyde was already bored and poking around the attic. The other two had persuaded him that working together on their science project would be fun, but it hadn't been so far. He had expected it would be like when they fought aliens together, but so far it had mostly been Luke reassuring them that he had it all sorted out. At least he'd get good marks, if Luke was involved.

"You know why, Clyde. Technology that we don't have yet showing up at a school. You'd get reporters and not just Luke's mother," Rani replied. Science wasn't her strong suit either, but she trusted Luke for that. "So what are we doing?" There had been some discussion the previous day, but they had decided to let Luke come up with something, since he would probably understand it best.

"Mum ordered some Arduino boards. They're like computer boards, only they're customisable. She's been writing for this cool magazine called Make." Luke went over to Sarah's computer and quickly pulled up the website. "They have all sorts of programming projects. I thought we could do something with LEDs." He'd talked this over with Sarah this morning, making sure that the project he chose was something appropriate for a kid his age and Earth's level of scientific knowledge. Sarah had pointed him to the Make website and let him loose. "We can make them flash in cool patterns. Maybe even work out a way to input the pattern there. Or, and this is really cool, some people are working on 3D printing and there are plans up to make a 3D printer. We could try to build one."

"Ooh, that would be cool," Clyde said. Maybe this wouldn't be so boring.

"It's very primitive," Luke warned, but he surfed over to Instructables and browsed through the available plans. "This one doesn't look like it would be too difficult- if we can find enough Lego," he finished dubiously, but he printed the instructions out anyway.

Clyde jumped on that. "I can help there. I've got lots of Lego. Even a Mindstorms set or two that I never figured out."

"Perfect." Rani grinned as she picked up the instructions from the printer. "Though there seem to be a few gaps."

"I'm sure I can fill them in," Luke replied carelessly. "Clyde, we'll assume you have the right Lego parts, and if not we can run out to Toys'R'Us and pick up another set. Rani, why don't you start reading out the other parts, and we'll see what else we need to buy."

Rani nodded, and started going down the list. "The Ultimate Fabric Painter. Never heard of it."

Luke quickly looked it up. "It seems to be a kit for extruding paint. We don't have one, but we should have all the parts to make one." A little digging provided him with tubing, a motor and plastic syringes. "Rani, your mum knows where to get decorating tips, right?"

"I'll ask her." Rani leaned against the wall and read over Luke's shoulder. "The kit would be easier, but it seems to be an American thing."

The aquarium air pump and tubing were found quickly enough, Rani said she'd make the icing and the rest of the items were common enough to be found in any house.

Clyde had started off wandering around, trying to act like he knew what he was looking for, but once again he quickly grew bored and started fiddling with the objects on Sarah's desk before settling down to check his Facebook account. He picked up something and started throwing and catching it before throwing it over to Luke. "What's this?" It was a small round box decorated with carved designs.

The box had been sitting at Sarah's computer for a week or so now, since the whole business with Clyde's father. The whole attic was strewn with Sarah's (and Luke's) half finished projects and alien artifacts, so he hadn't noticed it as something special before, but when Clyde threw it to him, Luke found himself considering it thoughtfully. "I don't know. I've never looked at it. I haven't had to use mum's computer recently." They had found that having one computer for the two of them hadn't worked, so Luke had received his own laptop for his "origin day".

"Some mysterious alien box. Who knows what it might contain?" Clyde answered in his spookiest voice.

Rani came over and looked at it more closely. "It just looks like a wooden box to me." Without asking she took it from Luke's hands and opened it and looked inside. "Hardly mysterious and alien." She carefully pulled three items out of the box and laid them on the table - a narrow gold ring, a lock of dark hair, and a fob watch. "Oh that's nice. My dad carries a watch like this, but I like the design of this one better. Maybe it used to belong to a famous astronomer or something. Are those constellations?"

"Orbits." Luke studied them. "Maybe it's just a design." But he didn't sound certain. "I have this weird feeling that it's writing of some sort." He didn't know why he thought that. He'd never seen anything like it before.

Clyde shrugged. "Maybe it was a gift for your mum from one of those scientist friends of hers."

"It feels odd," Luke said, suddenly gripping it tightly. "Like it's more than that." He loosened his grip and tried to open it. "Huh, the clasp won't open." He fiddled with it a bit anyway, hoping it was just caught on something.

"Maybe we shouldn't open it." This from Clyde.

The other two looked at him strangely. Usually Clyde was the first one to want to poke and prod at something new.

"I mean, after what happened to my dad and me, maybe we should ask Sarah first," Clyde said defensively.

Rani objected, "It's just a watch. What harm could a watch do?"

Luke fiddled with the clasp again and it suddenly sprang open. The other two crowded round to see and Luke found himself backing up. "You're blocking the light. After a moment's prodding with one fingernail, he pulled out a picture cut to fit in the top.

The other two stared at this, but Luke was looking at the watch. He attempted to wind it. "The watch is broken." He had no idea why this was significant, but he felt like it was.

"I wonder whose hair that is and why your mum kept it." Clyde said. Bored with the picture, he started to reach for the ring, but Luke stopped him.

Meanwhile, Rani asked, "Isn't that your mum?"

It was indeed Sarah, with a tall, curly haired man who Luke didn't recognise. Sarah was younger, her hair was longer and she was wearing a light blue dress that Luke had never seen.

Rani flipped over the tiny photo. There was nothing written on the back. Reaching over she picked up the ring and looked inside, ignoring Luke's reaction. "Aha!" She studied it a moment before reading aloud, "Paul and Sarah 4-5-97."

"I thought your mum said she'd never been married." Clyde suddenly flopped into the chair with a thump.

"So did I," Luke said, almost too softly to hear. Why would his mum have lied to him about something like this?

Rani probably would have said something, but she was interrupted by footsteps on the stairs, followed by the attic door being pushed open.

"Hello, how's the project going?" Sarah asked cheerily as she entered the attic with arms full of packages.

'Well enough. We had some questions to ask you about the technical bits," Luke said in an odd voice, hoping that his friends would keep quiet about what they had found.

Sarah dumped the pile of stuff on the sofa and started to say something.

But Rani couldn't wait any more. "Where did this watch come from, Sarah?"

Sarah stiffened. "Where did you find it?" she asked softly.

"It was by your computer." Luke tried to sound innocent, but he couldn't lie to her. "We opened the box. Mum? Who's Paul?"

"Paul Morley. He was my husband. Sort of." Sarah fell silent for a moment. "Something I try not to remember usually."

Luke reached over and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "Mum?" he asked again.

Suddenly, Sarah got defensive. "Well, if you'd been married to an alien masquerading as a human under false pretences and he left just as unexpectedly as he came, you probably wouldn't want to remember it either." She reached over and gathered up the photo, lock of hair and ring, and after putting the photo back in the watch, she returned them to the box.

"So why did you keep this stuff?" Clyde asked, mimicking Luke at his most tactless.

Sarah sighed. "I can't completely erase the memories, and it's a reminder that even I can be deceived by circumstances. I keep the fob watch because it may have some residual alien tech, I keep the lock of hair because I never know when I might need to check the DNA of another alien of his species masquerading as human." She had tried to convince herself that she wasn't being sentimental about Paul Morley, but she knew she was.

Changing the subject, she asked, "So, what did you need to know about your project?"

Rani took the hint and started asking questions, and a moment or two later the other two followed suit. The rest of the afternoon was passed in working out the details for the 3D printer, but Sarah knew that it was bound to come up again. Perhaps then, she'd be ready to talk about what had happened.


	7. Chapter 7

The watch bothered her. Paul persisted in holding on to it, even though it hadn't worked since she met him and somehow, every time she went to take a closer look at it, it wasn't where she thought it would be.

Finally, she resorted to the pickpocketing skills she'd learnt from the Doctor, and retrieved it from Paul's pocket. Not that she wanted to get rid of it. She just thought that given half an opportunity, she might get it working again. It would be the perfect birthday present for the man who had walked into her life and cured her loneliness.

Settling down at her desk, she took out a set of jeweller's tools (often useful in dealing with alien artifacts) and considered the watch. Immediately she went still. How had she never noticed the design on the top? She studied it carefully from all angles. Gallifreyan writing, not that she could read it. Frowning a bit, she slowly released the latch and opened it, only to be hit by a rush of memories. Someone else's memories.

Orange skies and silver grass. Faces, some familiar, some strange. Enough familiar faces that she knew they were his. Weird, seeing herself through the Doctor's eyes. The images flickered quickly and were gone and she immediately snapped the watch shut, fearing what might be lost.

But she realised as she closed it that she might have been too late. His memories were still swimming around in her head, threatening to overwhelm her. She closed her eyes and tried to reassert her own self and slowly won. The memories were still there, but she thought she could control them and keep herself separate. She'd never had any interest in losing herself in a man, even the Doctor, and she wasn't about to start now.

Once she finally got a grip on his memories and tucked them away into a small corner of her mind, she curled up in a chair and tried to think. This changed everything and nothing. Of all the men she could have married, this felt something like betrayal and something like an unspoken wish come true. Unspoken, unacknowledged, and certainly unhoped for. She wasn't sure if she liked the idea. He'd been - they'd both been wanderers, and here they were in some fantasy of a happily-ever-after that she had never wanted from him or for him.

He'd been both friend and lover, but Sarah had never thought she wanted more. It was all about the adventure and the freedom to travel and explore. She had never fancied herself _in love_ with him or planned for a house and garden and all the traditional accoutrements of marriage. Even when she'd married Paul, she hadn't thought she'd wanted _that_. But maybe she had, deep down. Or wanted to believe she did. Some strange desire to prove that she was normal and that she could have what other women were supposed to want from life.

And now? It was a lie. Whether he'd planned it or not. His memories tucked up in that fob watch, his alien body wrapped in the trappings of human anatomy. This wasn't how she wanted him. Trapped and caged, remade into a fake human to fit her life. To her he symbolised all that was alien and strange and wild and wonderful. This wasn't him, just some strange facsimile.

She did wonder if he'd known. If he'd done it deliberately. If it was what he had wanted. Or perhaps he had been trapped in this form and had somehow instinctively reached out to her to save him. She stared at the watch, wondering whether she should leave be, or give him back himself.

A knock on the door interrupted her reverie. Tucking the watch in the pocket of her jeans, she stood up to answer it, her mind still caught in weighing and considering what her next move should be.

"Ms Sarah Jane Smith." The man was tall and heavy-set, and wore his clothes like a costume. Alien, probably. Not like the Doctor, who understood but chose to break the rules. Like someone who was unfamiliar with the way humans dressed, and so everything was slightly off.

"You have the advantage of me," Sarah said guardedly. There was a very good chance this had something to do with the watch, but she couldn't make assumptions. Not yet.

"You can call me...Bob," he replied a little too pompously.

She recognised him then. From the watch. A flicker of memory. A Time Lord from the council. The Doctor knew him, and there was a sense of tenuous trust that went with it. Sarah had heard him speak of his people before, threadbare courtesy covering dislike, disdain and distrust. Therefore, this one must have some worth, if the Doctor gave him more than that. "All right, _Bob_. I presume this has something to do with the watch." The memories were confirmation enough. Best to admit to the watch. The timing was too close. He had to know that she had opened it, or he wouldn't have come round.

"You really shouldn't have meddled, but given your history, I can't see how we could have expected anything less." There was a slight admiration in his voice, despite the clear noblesse oblige.

Sarah accepted the compliment with a gracious smile. "I've had a lot of practice. So now what?" The ball was in his court. She wasn't offering anything more until she got some information in return.

He smiled at her grimly, but she thought he looked slightly amused at the situation. This one had a sense of humour. "Now I explain to you what we are doing here and trust to your perspicacity that you won't interfere."

"I'm listening. Mostly because you've been gracious enough so far." She was curious enough that she would play along for now.

"We may have our faults, Ms. Smith, but we do have the sense to realise that according to your dossier, you have little patience for being toyed with. Of course, we had hoped that it wouldn't be necessary to explain, but as you know too much already, you will be less apt to disrupt our experiment if you have a good reason not to." He entered the flat without asking, and took a seat on the sofa.

This was surprising. A Time Lord with common sense. What was the universe coming to? "And here I thought you Time Lords all looked down on us lesser races." She could have protested the invasion of her home, but superior forces were not to be trifled with. Instead she sat down in a chair facing him, and waited to hear what he had to say.

"Some of us do. Some just work with the tools available. And a good craftsman knows his tools." Still fencing.

Sarah did not object to the comparison. It was only to be expected. "So, this experiment...."

"We have figured out a way to take a Time Lord and rewrite his DNA so that he was, to all intents and purposes, human. The Doctor is our test subject." He steepled his fingers and looked at her over them, waiting to see how she reacted to this bit of information.

Sarah just nodded. Time and journalism had taught her patience. "He's probably the only one of you who'd be willing to co-" the pause was deliberate and clear "habitate with another race. But I return to my last comment and ask _why?_ This doesn't seem like something a Time Lord would do for fun."

To her surprise, he actually answered the question. "There is a war on. We're fighting the Daleks in a battle that spans all space and time. Time Lord vital signs are too recognisable-"

"Sleeper agents. You're creating sleeper agents." Of all the insane plans.

A nod. "Precisely. Long term sleeper agents made all the more effective because they believe their own cover story. The Doctor was the obvious choice as test subject because he has spent so much time around your race and was less likely to be- squeamish about the idea," Bob said delicately.

Sarah refused to take offence. "And was I part of the original experiment?"

"Not particularly. We did place him in London, so that the odds of meeting former companions and old friends were increased, because we knew that would be useful data. We did not expect-" He broke off and Sarah thought he might be trying to find some tactful way of ending that sentence.

"Our marriage," Sarah finished. "Or your Paul Morley being human enough to fall for another human." She could only imagine how the Time Lords would have reacted to that idea.

"We did conceive of the latter and were prepared for him to build ties. We just didn't expect the main tie to be with you." Bob leaned back against the sofa and let her draw her own conclusions.

Which she did. "A known troublemaker." Sarah grinned at this. "But I imagine this was useful data too."

"Everything is useful data. One does not always know what it is useful for immediately, but it will always tell you something about what you are studying." He paused, looking slightly awkward. "Unlike the Doctor, I know very little about humans besides what I have learnt in this study, so forgive me if I broach a subject that may be considered tactless in your society."

Sarah couldn't help laughing at his discomfort. "Oh, get on with it. It isn't easy to embarrass me, and I'm used to aliens with different customs. But I would have expected you to be less amicable to the situation we now find ourselves in."

"As I said earlier, we have a dossier on you, along with each of his other former companions. We are aware that you were lovers when you travelled together." The phrasing was hesitant, as if he were afraid she would object to his mentioning the subject.

Sarah shrugged. "I didn't expect that was a secret."

"But it is unusual. You were the first human he slept with, and the last. When we were doing the debriefing before the experiment started, I inquired as to the reasons. He stated that you were the first human he had found sexually attractive - not unexpected as our species has a much lower reproductive drive than yours-" He seemed to be relaxing a bit, as he brought the discussion to a more clinical level.

Sarah didn't object. This was an experiment after all, and like many scientists she knew, Bob seemed inclined to lecture on his topic, forgetting who was listening. Not so different from the human scientists she'd interviewed. She knew precisely how to keep him talking now - a hint that she had some knowledge of the subject and some curiosity. "I would be surprised if you didn't. With your lifespans you'd quickly face overpopulation issues."

Bob stared at her thoughtfully, and continued, "But he also said that he assumed that given your lack of innate telepathic ability, he would be able to walk away from you without forming the usual telepathic bond that binds two Time Lords together under such circumstances," He paused, looking a bit uncomfortable again. "Time Lords mate for life. Though we do form multiple such bonds. This gives you an odd place in our society. You are his wife, as we define the term, and thereby have all rights and privileges we would give to a member of our own race in that circumstance. And yet, as an alien, you have no idea what these rites or privileges are, nor any idea of the social customs surrounding them."

"Let's see. Polygamous, mate for life," Sarah mused, "given the low libido, you probably don't take many spouses, but enough to create more opportunities for genetic diversity in a smaller population. Given your long lives and again the low libido, you probably don't maintain a family structure like ours. More like a 'give me a call when we're both in town' sort of relationship." The sort of relationship she'd always thought she'd wanted from the Doctor.

"Impressive. And mostly correct." He seemed to mean it, which surprised her. "We do sometimes choose to live together or separate, depending on the situation. We also have the time to get over old hurts and remember what brought us together in the first place, so there is less of a need to make a clean break and start over. Though there are always a few couples who separate for good. Or make more complex arrangements."

"That does explain a lot about the Doctor's- attitude about certain matters." Now she was being circumspect. She wasn't sure if she should be worried or comforted by this new trend.

"There is one other subject that I wish to broach. During his Fifth incarnation, the Doctor applied to the Keeper of the Looms requesting a child bearing your genes and his. The application was turned down at the time, because there was no means of gaining your consent to this." He backtracked, feeling the need to explain. "The looms were originally created to aid those who could not have children naturally- same sex partners, and those with infertility issues. Now it is an option for anyone, but unlike natural births, the applications are screened. Consent is the main reason. Any parent who contributes more than 1/10th of the genetic material must consent to its use. While we screen for other genetic issues, we will rarely forbid a child on those grounds, though we will inform the prospective parents of any potential problems. As you mentioned earlier, genetic diversity is difficult in a population as small as ours, and sometimes those flaws can have unexpected positive side effects."

Sarah grinned at this. "Sounds quite sensible to me. We're just starting to map our DNA and I hope that after a generation or two of genetic screening, the human race will come to the same conclusion. There's just too much evidence against monocultures. We're already seeing it in our plant breeding and organisations have grown up to fight against strains being bred out of existence. Am I guessing you want me to sign something, then?"

"We have not spoken to the Doctor about it, but it seems an appropriate gesture, once the war is won, to allow him this." He looked at her gravely, as if to make her aware of the great honour they were granting her.

She couldn't resist a little teasing. "Despite getting dirty human genes in the pool?" Sarah laughed, then sobered, "But then it's another way of adding some diversity into your society."

"Perhaps a little of both, Ms. Smith." He was leaning back now, looking almost comfortable.

Sarah leaned back too, turning what he had said over in her head. "I'm surprised that you aren't requesting I get pregnant. For the sake of the experiment, I mean." Not that they needed to ask. Sarah assumed that they would have no trouble rendering her birth control pills useless or even implanting a fertilized egg in her womb.

The Time Lord stared at her. "But it is your body. The choice to physically carry a baby in your womb is yours alone."

"How civilised of you." Acknowledging that she had enough intelligence to make that decision for herself, rather than fall into their _superior_ plans.

"We have had other options for a long time. Do not expect us to fall into the same fallacies as your own race, Ms. Smith. It is certainly not necessary for you to carry a child if you do not wish to." He fiddled awkwardly with his tie, and seemed almost apologetic for the arrogance in this statement.

Until now, Sarah had mostly been aware of the Time Lords as an annoyance, her views coloured by the Doctor's reactions to his own people. It had never occurred to her that there might be anything their society had got right. "I thank you for that." She paused. Now was the time to push, if she ever did. "Of course, this is all nonsense. Though I expect you told the Doctor the same story."

"Whatever do you mean, Ms. Smith?" Bob tried to look innocent and failed.

Sarah pressed her advantage. "First of all, as you pointed out your whole species is very long lived. So why can you only devote one year to this experiment, with only one subject. And the whole premise doesn't make sense. What good are sleeper agents with no trigger? Do you expect them to open the fob watches at just the right time? And how long until the Daleks recognise that the watches are the trigger?" She answered her own question, "No, you'd have to have a handler for each spy and that would defeat the entire purpose. This isn't a long term strategy, it's a bolt hole. It has to be. Why else would you even care if you could cross-breed?" She was ranting now and didn't care.

Bob sat back and just watched quietly, as though he were waiting for her to get to the punchline.

"Oh, don't give me that look. You're not interested in giving the Doctor a half-breed child; you're thinking in terms of racial survival here. And he'll probably be on the front lines as canon fodder." She poured all her pain into her speech. He might not be with her, but just knowing he was out there, righting wrongs and helping people, had meant something.

Silence. Then a slow nod. "Impressive deductions, Ms. Smith. Though not quite correct. You are right about the war and our long term plans, and the Doctor's special skills are key in our final gambit - in such a way that he probably will not reap the benefits. But this is all abstract at the moment. We hope we will never have to use it. We hope that somehow we will find another way of defeating the Daleks."

Hope was such a fragile thing. But she bargained anyway. "Fair enough. But if you find that you must resort to this insane plan, I want my child. You will find some way of getting him or her back to me." She would not be the best of mothers, but it was better than losing them both.

"Agreed. We are not unreasonable about this, and if we were to initiate this plan, there would be no one left on Gallifrey to care for him or her." He was trying to take control of the situation now.

But Sarah seized on this new information. "You do realise you've given me a time frame now."

"You must have suspected or you wouldn't have asked. A child would need a parent. An adult might manage on his or her own." He stared at her over steepled fingers again.

She wondered what impression she had given him of her, but that didn't stop her from asking the next question on her list, "Does _he_ know what you have planned?"

"Not yet. Perhaps not ever. You will think it cruel, but he has skills the rest of us do not and if there is anyone who can salvage any part of this, it is he. Do you have any preferences for your child? Hair colour, sex, et cetera?" Bob genuinely seemed interested.

The Doctor was the only Time Lord she knew of with experience in situations like these. "A boy. I know you'll give him some convoluted Gallifreyan name, but call him Luke. I'd consider it. Having a child. Having his child. Human - we have a cliché - women knowing that they're going to lose someone having a child, so that they have this piece of him to hold onto. But the truth of the matter is that I'd be a lousy mother. Probably forget to feed him or get distracted by a story and leave him at the nursery while I flew to Africa. One can only hope that I will hold on to reason and not get swept away in the sentimentality of it all. Will he have someone to love him?" She didn't know why she asked that. After all, she was giving up a child to people in the middle of a war. She idly wondered about her own sanity.

"Your son? We are not savages, to turn a small boy into a lab rat. He will be given into the care of his next of kin, one of the Doctor's other wives. Her work covers what humans split out into obstetrics and paediatrics." He was trying to reassure her, but she wasn't sure she found that very comforting.

Sarah filed this information but didn't comment, instead returning to the technical side of things. "Low birth rate - I don't imagine it's a field that's highly in demand."

"And the demand has dropped. Your need to procreate goes up in times of war, because you are a fast growing species and your fertile period is short. We have more luxury, and few people will choose to bear children early in a war, though our population is dropping enough that that trend is starting to reverse itself. He will have a mother who loves him, who lost a child to the war, playmates his own age and a place in the academy, should he pass the test."

Sarah arched an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged. "Times change. We had admitted some humans to the Academy before the war, though now it is closed to all but our own. Gallifrey is not a safe place any more. I would be very surprised if he did not pass the exam. The Doctor may have scraped by, but that was pure laziness and we've seen what you are capable of. You may choose to represent yourself as a reporter, but you have more skill in the scientific fields than you admit." To her surprise, he sounded like he meant that admiration. Possibly because she'd been asking intelligent questions.

Sarah shrugged off the compliment. "So I have him until January. And I'm not to show him what's in the fob watch unless it's an emergency. And you will get my son to me, if things go the way you fear."

The Time Lord held out his hand. "Shall we shake on it? Or are you going to turn around and tell him everything?"

"You've shown me respect and fairness. I'll keep your secret for now. But if there is a catastrophe I can't handle on my own, all bets are off." Best to write in a contingency clause. Especially if there were Daleks involved. She shook his hand.

"Now if you'll sign here, and here and here. Your own alphabet will do." He handed her a contract she couldn't read and a pen that reminded her of some she had used in the TARDIS.

Sarah did as she was asked. It wasn't as though he was asking for her soul. Just her eggs, for now. She saw him to the door.

As he was leaving, he reached out and touched her cheek, quickly making mind to mind contact. He didn't have much time and he had to be careful. Removing the memories completely was both unethical and unlikely to work. There were too many threads she could follow, and she'd been through this sort of thing too often. Instead he edited, leaving most of their conversation intact. It was only fair. But he had made a promise that he knew he'd be unable to keep, and it would be a kindness to remove it.

If this mad plan worked, Gallifrey would be erased from history and barring the few they could save with the chameleon arch technology, the people of Gallifrey would also be lost. If they did do the cross-fertility test, there was almost no chance they would be able to get the boy off Gallifrey before the end, and if they did, his very existence would probably be written out of time and space.

Sarah had spent too much time in the Time Vortex, and might remember the promise. He would not leave her to mourn for a child that no longer existed. If by some miracle, they could send him home to her, they would, but he did not want her to spend her life waiting for someone who would never make it home.

Bad enough that she would lose the Doctor, but at least she would know he wasn't coming back.


	8. Chapter 8

Sarah wasn't home when the package from the hospital arrived, so when Luke, Clyde, and Rani spotted it waiting on the front porch, they decided to be helpful and open it for her. Working with Sarah had given them some respect for unknown objects, so they took it upstairs and had Mr Smith scan it before they opened it. Once he reassured them that there was nothing harmful in the box, Luke found a box cutter, and slit the tape. Inside was a neatly folded pile of clothing and a note.

_Dear Ms. Smith,_

You will be glad to know that we finally located the clothing we spoke of while you were here last month. Enclosed is everything the boy was wearing when he was picked up on Bannerman Road with no memory of how he got there. I fear the items will give you no clues as to his origin, as they seem to be a typical school uniform.

If I may be of any more service to you, please let me know.

Sincerely,  
Dr. Daisy Smith

Indeed, the clothes looked like a typical school uniform. Red and orange striped jumper and scarf and tie, white shirt, black slacks. The three teenagers stared at each other for a moment.

Finally, Clyde spoke. "Are they talking about you?" He looked at Luke a little suspiciously. "You didn't tell us Sarah was looking into your past."

"She wasn't. Or, I mean, she didn't tell me she was." Luke was worried. "I don't remember these clothes at all. I don't remember anything before I woke up in the Bane factory. Maybe it's a different boy with amnesia." He knew it probably wasn't. Two boys with amnesia in Ealing was too much of a coincidence.

Picking up the tie, Luke turned it over in his hands, trying to jar something- anything from his memory. He thought he had something for a moment, then it slipped away.

Rani unfolded the blazer. "We should be able to figure out what school it is by the uniform and work from there. What schools have orange and red as their colours?"

"Hogwarts," Clyde joked.

Luke stared at him. "You actually read the books?" He didn't think Clyde read anything except his social networking sites.

"I saw the films. We lead much more interesting lives than they do." Clyde winked at them.

Forestalling a discussion/argument, Rani studied the clothes more carefully. "There's no badge. No indication on the clothing what school they are for." Very strange, indeed. The whole point of a uniform was to advertise the school. Well, one of the points, anyway.

"No, not Hogwarts. Prydo- Prydonian colours," Luke murmured. Perhaps the key had been not trying so hard to remember.

Clyde stared at Luke for a moment and then half-turned to Mr Smith and asked, "Is there a school called Prydonian anything?"

Whilst Mr Smith thought, Luke nodded. "I don't know where that came from but it could be a clue."

"There is no instance of a Prydonian or Prydonia school anywhere in my databanks. Nor is there any mention of such in the prospectuses or websites of any school in England," Mr Smith replied.

"You're an alien," Rani said cheerfully, as though this were a good thing.

"Mum said I'm human." Luke glared at her, as though it might stop it from being true. "But there are humans elsewhere in the galaxy. Mum says lots of people have found themselves on alien planets somehow. Maybe I was kidnapped as a baby."

"And had experiments done to you," Clyde teased.

Luke glared. "Mr Smith expand your search to the known universe."

Sarah walked into the attic just as Luke said that, and stood in the doorway, unnoticed by the three teens. Spotting the blazer in Rani's hands, she guessed what had happened.

"I am sorry, Luke," Mr Smith replied, "But I still come up with no instances. There is a planet called Prydon, but it's breathable atmosphere contains too much methane for you to have lived on that planet without breathing apparatus."

Luke frowned at the computer.

Sarah walked over and wrapped an arm around her son, before saying quietly, "Mr Smith, let's try again. Prydonian chapter."

"Nothing, Sarah."

"The Academy on Gallifrey." The key to searching. Most specific to least specific. But so far she wasn't surprised by the results.

Mr Smith seemed to pause, causing Luke, who looked incredibly frustrated to look up at his mother. "You know something."

"Word association." Sarah grinned at Luke and patted him on the shoulder. She started to say something else, but Mr Smith interrupted.

"Gallifrey is a mythic place. There is no listing for an Academy on Gallifrey." He sounded a bit smug.

Sarah rolled her eyes at the computer. "You thought the zodiac thing didn't exist either." She sighed before stating precisely as though by rote, "Gallifrey was erased from time and has fallen into myth. I would not be surprised to learn that Luke's memory loss stems from the exact same event. It's difficult to remember something that no longer exists."

"Wait, are you saying that Luke's from Gallifrey?" Clyde asked, "Not from Earth."

"I think he's human." Sarah slipped her arm around her son. "But judging from those colours," she gestured at the clothing that they had laid out on the sofa, "and the mention of 'Prydonian' as opposed to Hogwarts-"

"Clyde brought up Hogwarts earlier," Rani offered helpfully.

Sarah smiled. "Same colour scheme. Scarlet and orange. Might be some sort of mythic backlash of the Time War-"

This time it was Luke who interrupted, "But she started writing the books years before you found me-"

Sarah squeezed his shoulders. "It was a Time War, Luke. The events and the after effects aren't necessarily linear. But as I was saying, I have a friend who belonged to the Prydonian Chapter of the Academy on Gallifrey. And I have other reasons to not be surprised that you might have come from there." Some of which she wasn't ready to speak of, even to her son.

"But I'm human," Luke insisted. Why was his mum so calm about this?

"Mostly. Sort of. If you're who I think you are." She let go of Luke and started looking more closely at the clothing. "These clothes are almost right, but I've seen enough aliens dressed in human clothing to know the sort of mistakes the beginners make." She paused, looking at the label - Marks and Spencer. "Though this batch is better than most. At least they got the idea of labels right. Mostly they just construct the clothing without markings like this. Or use the wrong materials. Or-" she stuck her hand in the pocket of the slacks, "they replace the regular pockets with ones that are bigger on the inside." She pulled her hand out triumphantly, bringing with it a pocket knife, ball of string, and a few other odds and ends.

"I don't remember any of this." Luke did not look happy. "Why can't I remember?" He slumped down on the sofa.

Sarah moved over to wrap her arm around him again. "There are many reasons why you might not remember. Some of it may come back to you in time."

Clyde looked at her suspiciously. "What aren't you telling us?"

Sarah hesitated as she debated how much to tell them. "I don't have all the pieces yet, but given the timing, I'm starting to see a pattern. I just don't want to say too much until I'm certain. I might have the wrong end of it."

"But you think I lived on Gallifrey?" Luke asked. "Which was erased from time. So how would I have ended up here. Do you think your friend sent me to you?"

"My friend or someone else who knew my reputation." And somehow when she wasn't available, he'd ended up in the care of a fob watched doctor. That couldn't have been a coincidence, but she wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Time might give her some answers, though, and with the war over, she might have time to find them.


	9. Chapter 9

Sarah kept reminding herself that it was only temporary. The other Time Lord had made that very clear indeed. Sooner or later the experiment would be over and Paul/the Doctor would leave. And he had made it equally clear that there was a war on, and that they might disappear abruptly, with no chance to say goodbye.

She tried not to care too much. Tried also not to let her knowledge affect how she reacted to Paul, but it was difficult. She missed so many things about the Doctor - her Doctor. Paul was lovely but he wasn't - there was something missing. Perhaps it was the travelling, perhaps it was just being open to all of life's possibilities.

It sometimes seemed like Paul had used up all of his spontaneity during their whirlwind courtship and marriage. Now whenever she suggested they do something different, he'd hem and haw and they'd just stay in the same old rut. It was as bad as being married to Harry Sullivan would have been. Harry was a lovely chap too, but she had finally convinced him that marriage wouldn't work. He would have wanted a family, a home and a stay-at-home mother, and even if he'd tried to accept that she was none of these, she would have always felt like a disappointment to him.

Once in a while, she thought about having a baby with Paul, despite what she'd said to Bob, to the point of nearly going off her birth control. There was some truth, she supposed, to the cliché of wanting a baby so that she'd have a piece of him after he left. But this wasn't really him and sense asserted itself. She'd probably be the worst mother ever- too busy with her life and career to properly pay attention to a child.

So they went on as they had been. Sarah who had been growing more and more stir crazy started taking assignments that sent her out of the country again. At first this worked. If it were summer or a school break, Paul would go with her and they'd make a holiday of it. But slowly, he started to resent her travelling so much. They fought. Neither was the sort to run out of the room in tears, so there would be painful silences instead. Sarah found herself almost wishing that this experiment would run its course, but she promised herself she wouldn't leave until the bitter end. She had made a promise to Bob that she wouldn't do anything to upset the experiment, and keeping that promise was a matter of pride.

She didn't try calling when she returned from Jaipur. It was right in the middle of the school day, and Paul hated being disturbed at work. Instead she let herself in to the cool, dark flat, hoping to catch up on her sleep before he returned. They'd fought again over the phone. Not yelling much, just disappointment and "why can't you?"s on both sides. She never spoke the real "why can't you?" out loud. Why can't you be more like the Doctor I knew. That would be too much, too cruel. It wasn't as though he knew.

He felt it anyway, and she could see it in his eyes. He didn't remember who he had been, but before she had opened the watch, she had told him way too many stories about her adventures, and she sometimes saw it in his eyes. His "why can't you" - why can't you love me the way you love him? Why can't I be enough for you? He didn't know that the question was absurd, that somewhere inside him was the man she had fallen in love with.

Sarah wasn't sure what it was that bothered her when she walked into the lounge. Everything looked normal. They were neither of them tidy, so the piles of books and papers were hardly unusual. Later, she would put it down to reporter's instincts.

Then she saw it. The fob watch was lying open on the low table by the sofa, open and clearly empty. Picking it up and closing it with a loud click that rang through the quiet flat, she walked slowly and carefully to their room. A quick investigation showed he hadn't taken much. She was going to have to deal with the stuff he'd left behind. Typical of the Time Lords, really.

She didn't cry. Not then. Instead she walked slowly to her knicker drawer and pulled out a tiny wooden box that she had bought during her travels with the Doctor. Inside was a lock of hair. She tucked the fob watch beside it and thought for a moment before removing her ring and laying it on top of the pile. Closing the box, she made no move to put it away. She had never thought of herself as sentimental. People left, after all. That was a lesson she had learnt long ago. But the hair might be useful later on. She had the (alien) equipment for DNA testing, and someday she might need to identify another chameleon arched Time Lord. One never knew. There were bound to be some indicators that the sample wasn't human, assuming it were possible to restore him to his original Time Lord body. She supposed keeping the ring was indeed sentimental, but she could allow herself this one piece of him.

As she attempted to sleep that night, missing his warm body beside her, she tried not to think of the war he was headed towards, or what the cost would be.


	10. Chapter 10

A fortnight passed very slowly.

Sarah was unsurprised to come home one day to find Luke bent over the uniform with a frown. "I don't remember any of this," he said unhappily. "It's like it's right at the edge of my consciousness, but whenever I try to reach for it, it slips away."

Sarah looked up. "Don't try to force it, Luke. I didn't because I wasn't absolutely sure, and given that you probably came from a planet at war with the Daleks, there is still the chance that your amnesia was caused by some physical trauma. Trying to force the memories might make things worse." She gave him a quick hug.

He hugged her back. "I'm glad you found me. D'you think that whomever sent me to Earth meant for me to come to you?"

"The letter from the hospital said that you were found on Bannerman Road. It seems like a logical conclusion," Sarah replied. "I was away that weekend. Chasing a destructive Skella in Cornwall. If I'd been here-."

"You can't be everywhere. And I'm here now. I suppose it does make sense. You spend your life helping refugees and you get a reputation." He gave her a half smile.

"Something like that." There was more, but Sarah wasn't sure she was ready to discuss that with Luke. The few memories the uniform had awoken, had prompted her to do some tests, but for now she'd keep the results to herself.

"I just wish we knew more," Luke said. "I hate not knowing."

"It will sort itself out, Luke," Sarah said, even though she wasn't sure she believed that herself.

Luke started to say something but was interrupted by the doorbell.

Sarah stood up to answer it, regretting the interruption. Opening the door, she greeted the woman standing there.

"Ms. Smith, I'm not sure you remember me." The voice was hesitant.

"Doctor Smith, how could I forget? But please, call me Sarah Jane. Won't you come in?" Sarah grinned at the other woman.

Dr Smith looked apologetic. "I probably should have called first, but I- I wanted to make sure you got the package alright. And please, it's Daisy."

"I did. Though it hasn't really helped with the question of where Luke came from," Sarah replied. "He's in the lounge if you'd like to see him."

"Please." Daisy seemed to be holding back a little, making Sarah suspect that there was more to her visit, but that would come in due time. "Oh, you've grown." This to Luke as they entered the lounge.

"It happens to the best of us," Luke said offhandedly, doing his best Clyde imitation. "Daisy?"

"You do remember me. Sarah Jane said you didn't." She was very pleased at this.

"I don't- I'm sorry, my memories of that time are very vague," Luke stared at her as though he was trying to place her.

"Luke, this is Dr Daisy Smith. She took care of you when you were at hospital."

"I don't remember any of that." Luke frowned, as if he were doing a maths problem that persisted in coming out wrong.

Daisy stared at him. "It might be that the trauma was recent enough that your memories hadn't quite stabilised." She paused, awkwardly, "I do want to apologise for letting Ms Wormwood take custody of you. She had all the right paperwork."

Luke clearly didn't know what to say to this, so Sarah stepped in, "Least said, soonest mended. He's safe with me now, and that's all that really matters."

The three of them stared at each other awkwardly for a little while.

"You're happy here, Luke?" Daisy asked finally.

"Very," Luke said firmly. He was staring at her as if he was trying to place her, and Sarah wasn't sure what to do about that. If Luke remembered before she dealt with Daisy and the fob watch, it might make things more difficult than they were now.

"I'm very happy that you found each other." Daisy paused.

"There's something else isn't there?" Sarah asked. "Something about Luke?" Perhaps she could lead the conversation in the right direction.

"No-" Daisy fidgeted a little. "Not about Luke. I did a little investigating of my own. You have a reputation for dealing with- with unusual problems." She looked warily at Luke as if she wasn't sure if he should be present for this.

Sarah nodded. "Luke knows what I do." Unusual problems could mean just about anything.

"I've been having dreams- nightmares, really. I don't- I suppose you'd say I should really be talking to a shrink, but it isn't that sort of nightmare. They're more like memories." Daisy stood abruptly and walked over to the window. "Memories of another world. God, this sounds so stupid. I'm not normally like this."

Paul had had dreams like that too. There had been times when she'd had to bite her lip to stop from saying something to him. But now, all bets were off. The war was over and he'd said himself that he was the only one left. If there were others, was it better to tell them the truth or should she just leave them in peace. Given the Doctor's semi-antagonistic relationship with his own race, Sarah could come to no conclusion.

But Daisy was distressed, and Sarah did hold the answer to the mystery.

The other woman hadn't noticed Sarah's silence, but kept talking in fits and starts. About a world that Sarah recognised as Gallifrey. And then she brought out the fob watch. "It all comes back to this, and I'm not sure why. A broken watch. I've never even been able to open it. But in my dreams, the markings on the front are writing of some strange alien type."

"Perhaps it just wasn't time," Sarah hesitated, but if Daisy had made that connection, it seemed only fair to give her the rest. "I've seen writing like that before."

"Like the watch upstairs, Mum?" Luke asked.

Sarah laughed nervously. Luke would make that connection. "That watch belonged to a friend of mine. A long time ago." By human terms.

The other woman looked at the two of them, torn between laughter and horror. "Then I'm not imagining this, or blowing it all out of proportion."

"Not at all." Sarah took the watch and weighed it thoughtfully. "And if I said that those were memories, bound away for a reason, and that returning them to you would change your life forever, what would you choose?"

"I'd want to know," Daisy replied without thought. "We're two of a kind, I think. Ruled by our curiosity." She paused. "Unless you think I'm some sort of alien sleeper agent out to destroy humanity. That wouldn't do at all."

Sarah laughed. "Don't worry. The race that made this watch might have their faults, but attempting to conquer the universe isn't one of them." She supposed they considered themselves above that. Mostly. There had been one or two renegades that she knew of. Perhaps it would be better to notify the Doctor before she encouraged Daisy to open the watch. But then again, the presence of another Time Lord should draw him out, and there was no easy way of contacting him without involving Mr Smith. Best to let things take their course and deal with the consequences afterwards. Sarah took a deep breath. "Opening the watch should restore your memories, if that is what you want."

"That is what I want," Daisy replied, and opened the watch.

Luke stiffened and stared. Sarah suspected Daisy's words had prodded more memories awake and she gave him a quick hug and got a tentative smile in return.

Sarah remembered what had happened when she opened Paul's watch, but this was unexpected and clearly much more painful. She hung back not sure if she could help in any way, just watching and hoping that she had done the right thing.

Finally, Daisy collapsed back onto the chair, a slightly stunned look in her eyes. "Thank you." Her voice had altered, and Sarah braced herself for Time Lord condescension. But instead Daisy smiled at her, just for a moment, before the smile faltered and sorrow replaced it. "There was a war," she said quietly.

Sarah closed her eyes. Perhaps it would have been better to leave things be. "There was. Gallifrey was destroyed." She was aware of Luke's presence, and his silence. She patted him on the arm, and let him be. She knew it was a lot to take in, and Daisy's state of mind worried her more.

"But- you shouldn't remember. How could you possibly-?" Daisy looked confused. "Unless he failed."

Sarah didn't need to ask who he was. "The Doctor? He succeeded. He also survived, perhaps by being in the eye of the storm. I've seen him since then and he's told me some of what happened." She reached out and touched Daisy on the arm, not sure what to say.

"The Doctor's alive?" Daisy laughed, almost hysterically. "Of course, he survived. If anyone could, he would." She took a deep breath. "I'm okay. I will be-."

"I can imagine." Sarah leaned back on the sofa. "Do you want to talk through it?"

Daisy smiled sadly at her. "If you don't mind. It would help. And I don't- I don't want to see him like this. He's been through so much already."

"More than you realise," Sarah replied. "The last few years have been very rough for him."

"He must have been so alone," Daisy said. "All of his people gone. I don't have anything to build on, except for my life as Daisy Smith. And that seems almost like a dream now."

"Well, that's what I do. Sort out alien refugees and either find them a place on Earth or get them back home." Sarah faltered on the last word. That wasn't an option here. "Why don't we start from the beginning? What did you do back on Gallifrey. Come to think of it, I don't even know your real name."

"It was long and Gallifreyan," Daisy said with a half-smile. She was starting to regain control now. "You probably couldn't pronounce it, but people used to call me Dacia. Luke mangled that into Daci when he was a baby, and I suppose it was just a short step to Daisy."

"You took care of Luke as a baby." Sarah wasn't completely surprised. She'd suspected some sort of link there.

"I asked to be sent near him, even if I didn't remember him. I didn't expect that our paths would cross at all." Daisy's voice trailed off. "You don't remember me at all."

Luke stared at her. "Little bits. It's coming back to me. Slowly. You weren't yourself before, but now you are."

"I'm not sure whether it's related to what the Doctor did, or if something else is behind it." Sarah paused. "It may come back to him in time." She wasn't sure if that was to be hoped for or dreaded.

"I can take a look. Do a brain scan." Daisy sounded determined. "Figure out some way to bring his memories back."

Sarah nodded warily. For all she knew, Daisy- Dacia would try to take Luke away from her, and if Luke remembered his past, he might want to go. Still, Luke had a right to those memories. "You'll find a way. You've been living as a human for at least two years. We may be primitive compared to what you're accustomed to, but I think you're more adaptable than you think."

"Primitive is right. When I think about the state of medicine on your planet-" Dacia broke off. Apparently she was too disgusted even to complete the thought.

Luke bristled. "Earth isn't primitive-"

"Luke," Sarah interrupted, laying a hand on his arm to quell him. Better to change the subject, for now. There were plenty of places in the galaxy less primitive than Earth, but for now Dacia was stuck here.

"I don't know how much you've figured out." Dacia looked at her thoughtfully. "You seem very bright for a human. But then the reports I read all said the same thing."

Sarah ignored the backhanded compliment. "He's human, not a Time Lord. And I've got a positive DNA match. A lock of Paul Morley's hair and a cheek swab from myself." She hadn't meant to tell Luke that. Not yet.

Luke's eyes widened. "He was right."

Sarah reached over and rumpled his hair. "Yes, he was right. About the genetics, at least. I never actually gave birth to you."

Daisy looked startled and then nodded. "When the assignment was first handed to me, I was horrified that the people in charge of the experiment would bring a child into a war zone. I considered stealing a TARDIS myself, and trying to get him to Earth where he would be safe. But I thought your planet was much more primitive than it is, and I wasn't sure you would believe that he was yours. And I'm not the Doctor. I was too worried about the consequences."

"What's done is done. He survived and he made it home to me. Even if I didn't know who he was until recently." It had taken the appearance of the uniform to push her into making the DNA test.

Luke looked at them both warily, before reaching over to hug Sarah. "Tell me what happened," he insisted. "I need to know."


	11. Chapter 11

Dacia had seen a slow down in her work since the war had started. No one wanted to bring a child into what might soon become a war zone. There would be time enough for that after the war was over. So she had volunteered for service in the med unit. Her speciality had been babies and small children, but she had gone through the full course at the academy, and a quick refresher course was all she needed. That accomplished, she expected to be sent out to one of the trauma units attached to the main fighting force, but instead they sent her into research.

She was torn. Part of her was glad that she wasn't at the front, and part of her hated the sterility of the labs. Her work up until this point had always been of the hands-on variety, working directly with women who chose to carry their own children, instead of using artificial wombs, and with small children up until the age when they entered the academy. But she wasn't the only one who had not chosen her current work and at least she was doing some good, formulating vaccines and antidotes.

Decades passed. She still had a few patients, and she eventually realised that that was why she would never be sent out to the front - there were only a half a dozen doctors in her chosen speciality and she was just too valuable on the home front. And she knew that the CIA wouldn't be above using her as a pawn to keep the Doctor under their thumb. Not that they needed to. This was one instance where the Doctor's interests intersected with their own.

She had heard rumours about the chameleon arch experiments, but it wasn't her field and her research kept her very busy. The Doctor didn't say a word. Perhaps he didn't know the nature of the assignment before he left. So they had gone through their ritual goodbyes and he had left.

Dacia tried not to think about his missions. She knew he was first in line for the worst jobs, because no one else could match his skills or experience. Instead she put him out of her thoughts and concentrated on her own work.

Birth rates were slowly creeping up again and she suspected a correlation to the losses in the war. They didn't have a huge population to begin with, and if they let the birth rate get too low, they might reach a point beyond which recovery was impossible. Meanwhile, her work in the med unit was also growing more difficult. Several of their staff members had been sent into the war zone and no replacements were forthcoming, leaving the department severely understaffed. While no one admitted it aloud, the sense was that the war was going very badly indeed.

When Dacia opened the door to find the President of Gallifrey and one of her most trusted advisers on her doorstep, she assumed that it must be bad news from the front. Her son had already died in the war and her daughter was long gone. But the Doctor was still out there, on missions that only the high council knew about. Instead they had explained about the chameleon arch experiment, given her the appropriate DNA samples and instructed her to run some cross fertilization experiments. They hadn't given her any room to argue, and she hadn't tried. If she'd objected, they would have just turned to somebody else and she wasn't about to allow that.

The experiment went surprisingly smoothly, but then humans were an incredibly fertile species. The packet they had given her gave her enough information to jury-rig one of the artificial wombs to suit a human embryo. She had always liked tending small children, and it had been way too long since she'd had one of her own to take care of.

Dacia sought out books on child rearing from Earth, always fearing that the day might come when she would have to chance sending him back to you for his own safety. Turning her office into a nursery didn't take long and Dacia enjoyed every minute of planning it. The books she was able to find on rearing humans seemed sensible enough, and she adapted them as best as she could to the resources she had at hand. The data crystal about the experiment had given her a name, and she tried to raise him by the standards of his mother's society. And yet, he was being raised on Gallifrey so she tried to balance the two influences.

The babe was perfect in her eyes. When he fretted at her cool touch, she wrapped him in a blanket and held him anyway. It had been centuries since she had a baby of her own to tend, and she never thought of him as other than her own. Training and nature meant that she tracked his growth and achievements, she also doted on him. Later, in studying the progress of human science, she would read of the merits of scientific detachment and wonder how she could have got any reasonable results by raising a science experiment instead of a child.

It was clear from the start that he was a bright lad. He had the run of the library and when she saw how quickly he absorbed concepts, she didn't attempt to hold him back. She had always enjoyed motherhood, and as her practice waned due to the war, she devoted herself to her son. His curiosity and intelligence intrigued her and she wondered if she had perhaps underestimated humans (after all the Doctor seemed to find them appropriate companions), or if it was some strange result of the fob watched Time Lord genes.

Being a scientist herself, she felt compelled to investigate. She read through the file the Council had compiled on Sarah, her time with the Doctor, her involvement in the beginnings of the war, her illustrious career after the Doctor had returned her to Earth and all of the field notes taken by the people who had run the original experiment. They had been quite thorough in their research of Sarah's past and her future, and Dacia was thankful for this, as she could not get to Earth herself to do primary research. All of the TARDISes, no matter how old or damaged had been pressed into the war effort.

It was interesting seeing Sarah through the eyes of someone who wasn't the Doctor. He had told her so many stories about the people he travelled with, but she knew all too well that he was an unreliable narrator. But Sarah had always seemed special to her.

Their species only took four or five mates over the course of a lifetime. The Doctor had only ever taken three and one of them was an alien. If she had been a Time Lord, Dacia would have met her. Sarah should have been a part of her extended family. But the Doctor had never brought her to Gallifrey. His excuse had been that the culture she had been brought up in had strong taboos about polygamy and that she wouldn't understand their customs, but Dacia had never quite believed that a woman who had travelled all over the galaxy with their husband would be quite so inflexible.

Dacia had had centuries to wonder how such a meeting would go, but she'd never been able to convince the Doctor to bring Sarah home. She had no trouble imagining Sarah on Gallifrey, but she began to suspect that the Doctor had other reasons for refusing. She was almost as much of a troublemaker as the Doctor.

Dacia was fascinated by the woman she found in the pages of the report. It wasn't that she was much more remarkable than others of her species, but she had done so much with what she'd been given. The woman had taken what the Doctor taught her and used it to help people. As much a tinkerer as the Doctor, by the time of the chameleon arch experiment, she was already mastering concepts that humans wouldn't discover for a century or two. Though she identified as a journalist, she had an amazing amount of scientific ability. Having exhausted human knowledge, she had moved on with her education methodically.

She would have been a good candidate for the Academy- in fact they had considered pulling her from the time stream and bribing her with that at the time of the experiment, fearing she might accidentally pass on what she knew. But Sarah had more sense than that and her activities had made her more significant in human history than anyone had realised. There had been no point at which they could have removed her from her own time without destroying the Earth. It didn't matter that every day of the Time War brought new changes to the history of the universe. However Sarah's time line was rewritten, as long as she remained on Earth, human history stayed relatively calm for centuries. She would indeed leave Earth again for varying periods of time, but removing her forever would be a disaster.

The document traced several time lines. In all cases since the war had started, Sarah had a child with Paul Morley, who continued in his or her mother's footsteps- at least where her hobby was concerned. The child always chose science over journalism and became one of the foremost scientists of their age. Reading between the lines, Dacia realised that Bob had discovered this shortly after "Paul" had taken up with Sarah and had allowed the relationship to stand because of this, especially when she discovered that "Paul"'s identity had been taken from an overwritten time line- where he had been married to Sarah.

Luke was a joy to be around, and Dacia used Sarah's history to figure out what bits of human culture to track down and introduce to him. The search lead her to science experiments and craft projects and books, and she found she was enjoying them as much as Luke was. Simple things that she had skipped over as a child that produced surprisingly delightful effects.

The Doctor had left plenty of human books on the shelves and Dacia worked her way through them. When she didn't know something about Earth or humans (What was a rabbit? Who were Shakespeare and the Hardy Boys? Did the Wars of the Roses come before or after the American Civil War?), she and Luke would look it up together.

In some ways he was surprisingly like other Time Lord children, and yet sometimes he was very strange. He made connections that would never have occurred to her about her own planet's history, stubbornly fought his way to an understanding of time theory and other subjects that young Gallifreyans were expected to master before entering the Academy, and was much more prone to displays of affection than Time Lords.

When Luke was seven, they read the entire Harry Potter series together. Suddenly he wanted to go to Hogwarts, and barring that, the Academy would do. Prydonian chapter of course. After all, both the Doctor and Dacia belonged to that chapter and it had the same colours as Gryffindor.

This odd mixture of imagination and reality was not something Dacia had expected. The boy wasn't just pretending, he had seen it in terms of what was available to him and related it to the real world. She had considered trying to get him into the Academy on and off over the years. He might have the background knowledge, but she wasn't sure he could actually handle the exam.

But he wanted it so badly, she registered him for the exam. Sending him into that room with the three other children eligible that year was the hardest thing she ever had to do. He came out of it exhausted. A ten hour exam might be normal for a Time Lord's stamina, but not for an eight-year-old human. She put him to bed and worried.

The exam results were posted the next morning, but she let Luke sleep. Better she should have time to prepare, if he had failed. He didn't. Of the six children who had taken the test, Luke had got the top score. He was officially a pupil at the Academy.

The house was empty without him, but Dacia had plenty to do. She still had her work in the lab and her handful of paediatrics patients. She and Luke chatted over the computer net often. She could tell he was somewhat homesick, but he was determined to prove that he was just as intelligent as a Time Lord.

Some of the classes came easily to him, some he struggled with. He didn't have a Time Lord's inborn sense of time, and as the youngest human pupil at the Academy, there was a period of adjustment on all sides. When the Academy had been opened to humans before, they were adults by the standards of their species, taking a modified course of study modelled on their own university system. Most of the instructors who dealt with the youngest pupils hadn't any experience with human students.

They couldn't make that exception for Luke. But the Academy was the only choice on Gallifrey, so they did their best by him. At least his class was small enough for one on one instruction. He was able to keep up with most of his studies and the professors were willing to work with his limitations.

But when Luke was twelve bombs started falling on Gallifrey and the Academy was closed. Not that the children were safer with their parents, but the thought was that they should have as much time together as possible. Dacia welcomed him home and worried. Before, Operation Chameleon Arch had seemed like the most unlikely possible end to the war, but the way things were going, it was probably only a matter of time. She almost wished she'd never heard of the chameleon arch experiment. Almost, because she wouldn't have missed out on Luke for anything.

But if they resorted to that plan, what would happen to Luke? She couldn't help imagining him left alone on a barren planet or wiped out of existence completely. Perhaps she should have sent him back to Earth when she had the chance, but it was too late now. Or was it? The Doctor had told her a story once about a working Time Scoop accessible via the council chambers. If they could get there, she might be able to send him to safety. If she could get him home to his mother, the laws of conservation of time would mean that history would overwrite itself and Luke would be with his mother, as if he had always been with her. At least, she hoped he would be.

It was no use appealing to the Doctor. They had kept him so busy that she hadn't seen or heard from him since before Luke was born. She would have to do this herself. He'd be so proud of her if she pulled this off, she told herself. It was the sort of plan he would come up with. She refused to consider the fact that this wasn't the sort of thing that she would ever do.

One step at a time. First the clothing. A school uniform would be the least likely to cause comment, and the least likely to change due to fashion. She knew it wasn't exactly right, but she didn't have much time. Next was the timing. Matching Luke's age to his mum's, and then figuring out where she would be living. And then before she knew it, she was shepherding Luke through eerily empty hallways, trying to find the council chamber.

Dacia tried to ignore the bombs falling outside and the debris that littered the hallways, focusing on the task at hand. She'd tried to explain to Luke what was going to happen, but she could tell he was scared. Finally they stumbled onto the right room and Dacia disabled the lock with one of the Doctor's old sonic screwdrivers.

The room was just as the Doctor had described it. There was the harp and the painting. Giving Luke a quick hug, she stood him by the right panel and tentatively played the tune on the painting, hoping that this would work. To her relief, the door creaked open, revealing the controls for the time scoop. But as she started to move towards the door, a bomb exploded almost directly on top of them, throwing Dacia off her feet.

She lay there a moment, feeling stunned, before she pulled herself back together. Luke had to be her only thought right now. After he was safe she could think about herself. She rubbed the dust from her face, and finally spotted him sitting right where she had left him. He looked a little stunned and she wrapped an arm around him and helped him to his feet, before pulling out her handkerchief and wiping off the blood from the corner of his forehead. Some of the debris must have hit him.

More aware of the limited time than ever, Dacia dragged him inside, past the wreckage. She programmed the Time Scoop as quickly as she dared, hoping that it hadn't been damaged in the bombing. But just as she pulled the lever, another bomb fell, jarring the chamber and throwing Dacia off her feet again. The chamber filled with dust and debris, and Dacia couldn't see if she'd managed to send Luke away in time.

Panicking now, Dacia dug frantically through the rubble, not finding anything but not daring to hope. She wasn't sure just how long she'd been there when her granddaughter, Susan, found her and led her away.

Later, after her hands had been bandaged and she'd been treated for shock, the Time Lord her husband had always referred to as Bob assured her that she was the only person in the chamber, alive or dead, and that they had registered the use of the Time Scoop on their scanner.

Once she had calmed down, Dacia allowed them to prep her for the chameleon arch. She boggled a little that there were some of her people who thought death preferable to not being Time Lords any more. Her only request was that she be sent to the same time and place that Luke had ended up. Even if she didn't remember him, or he her, she wanted to be near him.


	12. Chapter 12

About halfway through the story, Luke had let go of his mum and walked over to hug Dacia. Sarah tried not to worry about that. He was bound to be torn between the two of them, and he had a good heart. Instead she sat as still as she could, while Dacia finished her story.

"There's not much to tell after that. I woke up Dr Daisy Smith. And in retrospect, my life wasn't all that different. I was still doing the job I loved." Dacia shrugged. "Except I felt a little more useful. Even at our most prolific, there weren't more than two dozen children born in a year."

"You could continue doing that, Daisy," Luke said. "We could use a doctor like you here. And it's not that primitive really."

Dacia started to reply but she was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.

Before Sarah could get up to answer it, the Doctor strode into the room. She arched an eyebrow at him. "I didn't hear your TARDIS."

"I took the Tube. You know how unreliable she is over short hops." He grinned at her.

Unreliable over large hops too, but she resisted the urge to say that out loud. Instead she watched in silence as he registered Dacia's presence in the room. She was the one he had come to see, not Sarah. Rather than continue an awkward three cornered conversation, Sarah decided to make a hasty retreat. "Why don't I leave you and Dacia to talk?" And Luke. But she wouldn't think about that. "I'll make tea."

She slipped out of the attic and walked slowly down to the kitchen. He had his wife back. The one who had shared his life for thousands of years. Compared to Dacia she was an insect- a mayfly perhaps. How could she compete? Why should she compete? Excepting the whole chameleon arch thing when he hadn't been himself, they'd never been anything but casual lovers. Dacia must know about this if she'd raised Luke. Perhaps Time Lords were more casual about adultery.

But since the fob watch had been opened and Dacia had recovered all she had been, Sarah had felt less comfortable with the other woman. She clearly wasn't as comfortable with humans as the Doctor was. Sarah couldn't help feeling a little shabby and awkward in Dacia's presence, despite the other woman's obvious naivety and uncertainty. The Doctor was so good at putting people at ease, but even with him, that Time Lord arrogance and xenophobia came through occasionally, even if it was as mild as "stupid apes".

But Dacia was much more conventional than the Doctor. That was clear in the way she looked at things and people- humans as if they were things. She occasionally seemed to be trying to get past it, but it was clear that she didn't think much of human technology or anything else about Earth.

Sarah couldn't help wondering what she would do next. Gallifrey (and her whole way of life) was gone and it was obvious that the Doctor's lifestyle wouldn't suit her. How had the two of them ended up together? The Doctor was so open to new experiences and somehow Sarah had got the impression that Dacia had never left Gallifrey except on the Time Lord version of packaged tours. Everything sanitised and neatly arranged so they didn't have to mingle with the locals or even acknowledge that they were people.

Still, the Doctor must have loved her once and judging by the way he looked at her, he still did. However, that didn't necessarily mean anything. The Doctor had a huge heart with plenty of room for all of his companions over the years. She was so lost in thought that she didn't notice the Doctor enter the kitchen until he spoke.

"Sarah, is everything alright?"

Sarah was startled by the question. Noticing other people's feelings had never been the Doctor's strong suit. "I'm fine." She shrugged the question off. There was no point in letting silly human emotions get the best of her. She'd done that once at Deffrey Vale and hadn't ceased to regret it.

"No, you're not fine." He wandered over and kissed her on the top of the head. "I know what Dacia can be like. She's your typical sheltered Time Lady, no matter what experiences she had while she was chameleon arched. But she also tends to underestimate herself."

"If you're planning to tell me that she's more scared of me than I am of her-" Sarah started.

"Not scared," the Doctor interrupted. "But you are in your element, and she isn't. She may come off as arrogant, but she appreciates all your support. And, well, she's been wanting to meet you for centuries."

"Why me?" The Doctor must have had hundreds of companions. "Because I'm the only human you had the bad taste to sleep with?" Who knew if that were even true now. Between Rose and Jack, she'd be very surprised if it were.

But he was nodding the affirmative. "Precisely. By Gallifreyan custom, we're married, which makes the two of you related, in a way. If you had lived on Gallifrey, you would probably be close friends."

"Sexual jealousy being a human concept." She didn't feel terribly jealous of Dacia. In fact, back before Bob had let it slip about Time Lords only taking a few mates over the course of their lives, she had assumed he slept with most of his companions as a matter of course and it hadn't bothered her. She still wasn't sure why she had got so snippy with Rose, but she suspected it was more about feeling old and past her prime than anything else. Though it could also have had something to do with finally admitting she was in love with him.

"Well, not a Time Lord one." He grinned at her. "Yes, she's prone to condescension, but she also sees you as a sister, so-to-speak, and she's had less experience with other cultures than you have. So, she expects you to behave the way someone brought up in our society would behave. And I just got an earful about how I underestimated you and how I should have brought you to Gallifrey. I know you were just doing what you would do for any stray alien, but she doesn't see it that way."

Sarah blinked at him. "Well, she was more-" Sarah paused a moment, trying to think of the appropriate word, "polite, than some of the other aliens I've encountered. And I would have given her the benefit of the doubt for your sake and for Luke's."

"I appreciate that." The Doctor shrugged. "I guess I was right about Luke after all."

"I suppose you'll insist on saying, I told you so." Sarah braced herself for it.

"I thought I just did." He paused. "I didn't know about that part of the experiment. I never would have expected that of Bob. I only consented because he was one of the few close friends I had among my own species, and he did have some logical reasoning behind his plans."

The timer pinged and Sarah turned to take the fairy cakes out of the oven. Slapping the Doctor's hand away, she set them on the counter to cool. "You can have one once they're frosted. I'll even put edible ball bearings on them for you."

"Would you?"

"For you, yes. Besides, Luke likes them too."

"I don't appreciate you as much as I should." He sat down on the table and stared at her. "I'm sorry I- Paul- left you so abruptly."

"I knew it could happen. Bob said something to that effect." She would have liked to say she had been prepared to deal with it, but she hadn't been.

"You made a good impression on him." The Doctor smiled at her.

"All I did was ask intelligent questions." Sarah shrugged. "It's what I do. And shouldn't we go back in and check on Dacia and Luke?" She picked up the tea tray and studied the Doctor carefully.

"When I left them, Luke was trying to sell her on staying on Earth," the Doctor said, but he stood and led her back into the lounge, where Luke was indeed lecturing Dacia on the wonders of Earth.

"There must be something that the Doctor told you about that you want to try. Chips. Fun fairs. The London Eye." Luke was clearly reaching now.

Dacia stared at him. "You like it here."

"I love it here. And I love living with Mum." He grinned at Sarah. "Help me convince her to stay."

Sarah poured the tea, while she considered the question.

Dacia picked up her tea and drank it gratefully. "Have you two sorted out what to do with me?"

"You could always come travelling with me," the Doctor said hopefully. "Help me find the other chameleon arched Time Lords. Starting with Susan."

"No, thank you. If I wanted that life, I would have taken you up on the offer a long time ago," Dacia said decisively. "But when you find Susan, convince her to come visit. I miss her."

"So what do you want to do?" Sarah asked. Perhaps it was time to back off and let her make her own choice. She was trying not to prejudge the other woman, but the answer was the last thing she expected.

"Go back to being Daisy Smith." Dacia hesitated. "It's not that different than my work on Gallifrey- except there are so many more children to care for. I loved being a paediatrician, but our low birth rate meant that my services weren't in much demand. I remember everything Daisy knew, so I can maintain the same level of care and continue doing my chosen work as well."

"Even though we're not your species?" Sarah couldn't help asking, even though she knew she was being tactless. She had expected the woman to demand to be taken to a more technologically advanced era, rather than choose to continue roughing it here.

Dacia winced. "I may not have mingled with other species as much as my husband, but I assure you that I have no problem living the rest of my life surrounded by your species. Quite honestly, my work had become sort of boring because we've cured so many of our diseases. Your people need me more."

The Doctor grinned proudly at her. "Now you're getting it."

Sarah smiled. "So, you're staying because of scientific curiosity. I can understand that."

The Doctor grinned amicably at both of them. Sarah knew he was happy to see them getting along. He hated having to play peacemaker among his companions.

"I suppose I do like my creature comforts, and as long as Gallifrey was around, I had no reason to leave. Now, it's gone and I find that your world is comfortable enough for me." Dacia paused a moment. "You've got enough technology that it's not as though I'm roughing it. I find I'm looking forward to going back to my job. The kids need me. And I'd never persuade Luke to leave."

"I'm staying right here with Mum." Luke grinned at Sarah. "No cakes?"

"They're cooling. If you want, you can take the Doctor into the kitchen and ice them, as long as you save a few for us." She watched as the two of them practically ran into the kitchen before turning to Dacia. "That's a good way of looking at it. You're always welcome here." Sarah meant it too. They might not be friends yet, but time and mutual respect would help.

Dacia sipped her tea. "You're being wonderful to me. I want you to know just how much I appreciate it."

"It's what I do." Sarah shrugged. "And you're family. Sometimes even on Earth the family you choose is more important than that blood tie you made so much of, and not always because you don't love your family."

"We can figure out a way to make this work. Somehow." Dacia studied Sarah over her teacup. "Do you think we can trust them to leave us some cakes?"

"Probably not." Sarah stood. "Why don't we go and check up on them?"

"I like the way you think." Dacia grinned at her and Sarah found herself grinning right back.

Perhaps they would find a way to make this work.

_I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains  
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain  
There's more than one answer to these questions  
pointing me in crooked line  
The less I seek my source for some definitive  
The closer I am to fine._


End file.
